Deployment & Platform

Plug and play

FRED is distributed as pre-compiled binaries. Installation requires only three steps: installing the package, setting the target domain, and starting the system.

Registry operators who require custom builds or need to target platforms outside the pre-packaged distributions may also compile FRED directly from source.

Reliability

FRED has been in active development since 2006 and has proven itself as a production system behind the .cz TLD, operated by CZ.NIC. For demonstration, registry statistics are published here.

Core registry services are implemented in C, data is stored in PostgreSQL, utilities and external integrations use Python 3. Both are industry-standard choices with well-understood operational characteristics and long-term ecosystem stability.

High performance

FRED is optimised for high throughput at scale. On common server-grade hardware it can process roughly 200 registry-changing operations per second – covering registrations, updates, renewals, and deletions – with databases of up to 20 million domains tested (as per recent benchmarks).

Modularity

FRED consists of many different modules and components. One of the advantages of this design is that you can install only the modules you want to use. Different components of FRED can even be installed on different servers, which provides better scalability and the ability to apply different security policies to different parts of the system. FRED is also capable of running in a single-server configuration, which is useful for testing and experimenting.

Open source

FRED is published under the open-source GNU GPL licence, giving registry operators full access to the source code and the freedom to inspect, modify, and redistribute the software. Open access to the codebase also strengthens security and trust because anyone can read and audit the code, vulnerabilities and bugs are more likely to be spotted and reported by the broader community rather than discovered silently by malicious actors.

Online documentation

FRED is documented online at https://fred.nic.cz/documentation, covering installation, configuration, operation, and development.